This strength called desperation
by Yui Miyamoto
Summary: When Souji messes up on a mission, he has to redefine his place in the world.


**fandom - Peacemaker Kurogane**  
 **title - This strength called desperation.**  
 **rating - r**  
 **pairing - hijikata x souji**  
 **description - When Souji messes up on a mission, he has to redefine his place in the world.**

 **Disclaimer - Peacemaker Kurogane isn't Yui's.**

We aren't protectors of morality,  
for how can we kill with due reason?  
We aren't self-righteous  
saying that we represent the tangible form of justice.  
We are fulfilling a job  
that we believe in with all our might.

Whether it is termed 'wrong' or 'right',  
it is the way we live,  
A code under the steel of our sword  
and within our own flesh.

We are human  
and the courage to fulfill our desires and beliefs  
has no room

for shame.

 **This strength called desperation.  
By miyamoto yui**

At the strangest of times, I remember the kids of my neighborhood chanting, "You won't get me, you won't get me, you won't get me!"  
They scatter while I put my hands on my face and sing as loud as I can, "I'm the crimson colored oni! Run away and hide! When I count backwards from ten, I'll…FIND YOU~!"

Yes…  
That's right…That's all I am.

 _Good job, Souji.  
You're so good at this._

 _So efficient.  
You can't find anyone who is more qualified!_

From a distance, I faintly hear my name. "Souji! Souji!"  
HIT!

His gruff voice finally penetrates into my skull, "SOUJI~!"  
He takes my waist in between his bloodied hands as my undignified body sprinkles various surfaces of tatami mats and grass with mixed red water. Most of it not being my own.

We are retreating having done our job, but as I am thrown onto one wall of his room, I look up dazed with my fingers convulsing in mid-air and at eye-level. The dried blood flecks off, but my clothes smell of the stain that repulses me more than my hated self.  
I hold onto the end of my tattered blue and white uniform. My hair falls in uneven clumps all over my shoulders like finely torn kimono pieces desperately trying to fall to the ground in its own erratic chaos.  
He stands over me with his hands in clenched fists and feet apart. His eyes are closed in a feral anger that doesn't suit his gentle nature and seemingly, ever perpetual disgruntled visage.

I have never seen him so mad at me in his life. But when he opens his eyes to carefully look at the same ragged child-apprentice he picked off the streets many years ago, there is nothing but an abysmal depth.

It spells nothing less than disappointment.

In these eyes, I have lost the only place I cared to belong to in this world, haven't I?

I have lost my reason for existence. You've finally found out the fraud behind the smiling mask, haven't you? You've finally come to terms with how useless I've been from the very start, haven't you, Hijikata-san?

"WHAT THE HELL WERE YOU THINKING, SOUJI?!"

The blast shakes the whole establishment and the reverberating walls prick through my back straight into my heart in various sizes of nonexistent nails and needles.

"I had to make sure he was dead."  
One eye looks up defiantly at the captain before it. It's the sign of the clawing beast I've tried to suppress inside of me with the grinning face as its seal. It is the critical being who ruthlessly lets no one live in between his words and self-righteously acknowledges the authority of who lives and who dies.

THAT is why there is no one more qualified than me for this lonely, merciless position.  
This strength was called desperation: to find meaning through killing others in every sense possible.

A prolonged suicide with many pretty distractions.

"You call that poor attempt to justify your fear 'making sure the job is done thoroughly'?! After all this time, you've studied under me and you truly haven't learned anything?!"

The air transforms into a thicker substance and so the already suffocating night becomes even more unbreathable.

"I perform my duties as I always have. I don't know why you're unsatisfied now, _Hijikata-san_." His name comes out with an acidity that burns a strange aftertaste in my mouth, and I hope it chars a part of his heart.  
I look through him and not at him.

At this state, I am struggling to live; I just don't know what part should be suppressed and who should die inside of me.

"I never knew you to be a coward." At that moment, he bends down to take a hold my broken wrist. His tone becomes low as I protest to him carrying me into his arms because it's unnecessary. He does it anyway so that I'll be checked immediately.

"Your carelessness…It is the root of your compassion."

In the dead of night, the wooden boards creak under his feet as he pushes his cheek against my red-splattered bangs. "Maybe it was a mistake for me to push you so hard."

My fingers hold on to the familiar clothing and he stops walking. Holding me together, I quietly sob into his chest and take in the same dusty smell of his body.

 _/"Nothing good can come from a child like that. You should have let them take him." My sempai took my chin and gave me a good look. "This pretty boy is more suited to be a high-priced iroko. With a rich patron, he may have been able to become an onnagata because of his beautiful face."  
"It still isn't too late to join," another chimed in. "I wonder how much they would give for you."  
They laughed as I pulled my chin away and brought Hijikata-san his tea./_

 _ **++/++/++**_

 _One of the elders lightly pressed, "The child can't even hold a sword properly. Please reconsider this absurdity. You've never taken a formal pupil before and there are far more skilled than he."_  
 _"No. I like his eyes."_  
 _"What kind of justification is that?"_  
 _"When have I judged poorly?"_

 _His head turned towards the screen door. "Souji, stop eavesdropping on adult conversations."_

 _My heart leapt._  
 _After begging for food and being left at the snowfall, I was sure that I would be comforted by death./_

But your kindness has caused you nothing but pain, Hijikata-san.

When he brings me back to my room, I push him away as I say, "Don't look."  
The violent fits of coughing come out as I grab my chest. I can no longer stifle them. I had tried so long to hide it from him and now it finally strikes at the worst possible moment.  
My hands immediately cover my bloodied mouth. Little, single rivulets trickle down the sides of my mouth and through the crevices of my fingers as he stares at me helplessly.  
He can't even utter my name.

And without a word, the child I had buried underneath corpses and the sins of the skilled efforts of my hands, came out once more. He was the same one who hugged his knees in an alleyway after running away and found himself in the red-light district trying to hide from even the cold, icy coffin forming around him.

 _/I want to give up. I've tried so hard, but I'm so tired now. If I'm going to be an iroko I might live, but…_  
 _..._  
 _Is this the life I want to live?/_

"Survive", said my cruel torturous human instinct.

But I would keep running away with nowhere to go to.

My ill-matched parents, a former soldier of high status who married a beautiful girl-child, could no longer take care of our daily needs. The gap in classes became wider and we had been swallowed into debt.

Out of three children, I was pushed forward. I was dispensable. _"Please accept our son as exchange for our debt."_

I…I…  
I don't want to die.

Hijikata-san then takes my unbandaged hand, leaves a note, and we go out of the area for two whole days.  
In a private bath in some partially abandoned inn, he washes me thoroughly with his firm, yet tender hands. I'm sitting in the low wooden tub with my back against his chest.  
He continues to caress my hair, pulling at it once in a while with his teeth as he rubs water on my skin over and over. This image doesn't seem to suit him.

His looks never appear to be of the gentle type.

I close my eyes, but I open them again not wanting to miss a thing. Like a kid discovering things for the first time, I watch his hands fascinated, but his chin is on my left shoulder. Our knees are bumping into one another as we squish into this medium-sized tub, but it feels comfortable.  
I laugh a bit because the way he holds me has always been the same and I've never seen it.

When he used to instruct me on how to hold the hilt of my sword, he'd put his hands over mine while intertwining our fingers. Then, he would step away slowly yet surely to make sure I could carry this object which was taller than my own height.

This touch and the one then are one and the same, just sharpened finer.

Why hadn't I seen it? Why didn't I _let_ myself see it before?

He whispers into my ear while holding my chin in one hand and the inside of my thigh with the other, "Let's live a normal life for now."

Before I can answer, he rubs his hands on my skin. I just murmur while breathing deeply when I glimpse at his sweating profile.  
Against our bodies, the water is nothing but ice when we make love for the first time.

So this is what it is like…

A life without worries or pain…  
A life with no sickness or emotional injuries…

A life that I don't enjoy, for I know that this is the life I would have led without him. This unfeeling child who would have never understood the true meaning of being alive after being frozen in some obscure city for so long.  
My hometown was a place touched by tinges of seasons, but was never truly enwrapped in them.

"Hijikata-san…" I moan while drowning into the water with his fingers pushing inside of me.

He teases me when he turns me around, but as I hold onto his shoulders, he tells me to relax. I'm supposed to forget. We're going to take a short intercession from life itself.  
I cringe as I slide into his body, as if I've always been meant to be by his side. My elbows now dangle on his shoulders while my hands hold onto one another.

I wince because of the pressure I'm putting on my broken wrist.

I am unclean and I am a coward. And because of these things, they make me aware that somewhere inside of me, I'm still human.

Then, I crunch my body as I push my palms onto your upper arms from the pain. And I hear myself screaming through the panting. It echoes and I hear my name softly from his lips.

I'm saying that I'm scared and happy at the same time because I've been able to do as I pleased with the most unique freedom through the restrictions. I'm shouting that I see his smiling, proud eyes every time I take up my sword.

I never wanted to lose my place there.

"I…" My mouth closes shut.  
Again, at the most critical time, the words I want to say the most become muddled when I start choking from the overflow of emotion I'm not used to showing.

But then, as you gently pull me closer to rub my back, our rhythm becomes slower. You pull out my hand and touch your lips to my bandaged, broken wrist. Like scratches on a sword, you're trying to embed, not erase my hurtful memories.

I wonder why when I've tried to forget them for so long…

 _/As I was being handed over to the troupe who bought me, my child eyes exchanged a brief, awestruck glance at your fierce ones. You had your arms crossed and walked past me as the crowd blocked your handsome appearance all over again._

 _At the moment I gave up on life, when I saw you, I wanted to live. I wanted to be as strong as you. So, I wrung free trying to find you./_

But instead…

 _/In that darkened alleyway, it began to snow. It was the first snowfall I had ever seen in my entire life, and yet, this wish I had always wanted to see was ignored by the incredible need to find you or die trying.  
I cried and begged on the ground towards the sky. In between my heart-shaking sobs, I prayed with my eyes tightly shut,_

 _"Kamisama. KAMISAMA~!_  
 _Please help me!_  
 _Kamisama, save me~!_

 _Please…please let someone want me._

 _If it's that person, I will do anything. ANYTHING._  
 _I will endure **anything**!"_

When I leaned against the wall waiting to be caught or to be frozen to death, I opened my eyes to find you squeezing into the alleyway. You offered your hand to me while my mouth opened in awe. You took me into your arms without a word./

…you found me.

You gave me a purpose to stay.

At this moment, I can still cry about it.  
You kiss me on the mouth even though I shake my head. I keep on telling you not to with tears in my eyes because you'll catch what I have. But when you say it doesn't matter, now, I see you so clearly.

The look you gave me years ago, I realized, was empty courage until I filled you with nothing but me.

And because I'm aware you exist in this world,  
because I blindly love you above everything,  
I've been able to do anything. Even the impossible.

Quickly, our time to forget comes to an abrupt end.  
As we head back into the imperfect world, we walk side-by-side. In your stern, yet passionate eyes, you found value in my life. And all this time, you were trying so hard to make me believe in that too:

 _Unlike those that have been thrown away,  
or who have been forced to waste it,_

 _even if this isn't the kind of life you want to lead,_  
 _or the kinds of sadness you want to deal with_  
 _and the happiness you didn't think you needed,_

 _because you are privileged to live,_

 _Live proudly._

Now, each second you look at me,  
I, desperately, come to terms

with my own mortality.

And then, I tilt the sword in my hands to watch my own reflection on the worn, yet shimmering blade.

 **Owari. / The End.**  
 **-**  
 **Author's note:** It's been a while since I've done a Peacemaker fic, hasn't it? Well, even though I had written two other fics before this one, I became especially fond of this one, so I decided to fully finish this one first. I think it's because Souji and Hijikata always bring out a side of my writing and myself that I never thought existed. It always seems fresh whenever I write about them and so I enjoy doing these characters. Besides, I always had this fantasy with a mature Hijikata falling in love with a young Souji.

Though I couldn't make a long shot as I always wanted, I think this will be sufficient for now. One of my favorite periods in Japanese history are the Meiji and Taisho periods because of my favorite author (Soseki Natsume-sensei).

Ah, the two translations are:  
Iroko - a term used to refer to a boy prostitute in Kabuki theatres long ago.  
Onnagata - males who played the female parts in Kabuki theatre.  
I included this because I love studying about theatre like Noh.

But all in all, even though this is a short piece, I spent a ton of time trying to refine and pick at it to get the full of effect of what I wanted. Even though I tried to secure the dualities of multiple opposites within the story, I'm not sure I fully was able to explain it. However, I tried my best and so this was what came out. ^_^ If I messed up ages or details, I'm sorry 'cause I've not read the manga. ^^;;;  
And then here I was thinking, 'oh, it's done' and then read it and said, 'nope, it needs some molesting again…'

I love ya and hope you enjoyed it!

Love,  
Yui

Saturday, June 11, 2005  
11:57 PM


End file.
